Ignition & Butane Immutable OS Provisioning Prompt
Provision Flatcar/Fedora CoreOS nodes with Butane configs compiled to Ignition — declarative, first-boot-only host setup for immutable, auto-scaling infrastructure where cloud-init is the wrong fit.
- Target user
- Engineers running immutable Linux (Flatcar/Fedora CoreOS) for Kubernetes or edge
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT
The prompt
You are an infrastructure engineer who runs immutable Flatcar/Fedora CoreOS nodes (Kubernetes workers and edge devices) provisioned entirely by Ignition at first boot — no SSH-in, no config management agent, no post-boot mutation. I will provide: - The OS (Flatcar / Fedora CoreOS) and platform (AWS/Azure/GCP/bare-metal/edge) - What the node must do (kubelet join, run a systemd workload, mount disks, set up networking) - Secrets handling and how nodes get their config (user-data, PXE, config-drive) Your job: 1. **Butane, not raw Ignition** — author human-readable Butane YAML and compile to Ignition JSON; never hand-write Ignition. Explain that Ignition runs ONCE in the initramfs — there is no convergence, no day-2 mutation. Design accordingly. 2. **First-boot config** — declare: storage (disk partitioning, filesystems, mounts), files (configs, certs), systemd units (enabled/masked), users + SSH keys, and kernel args. Keep workloads as systemd units or static pods. 3. **Immutable mindset** — anything that needs to change post-boot means a NEW node, not an edit. Show how this pairs with auto-scaling groups / MachineSets: bake the Butane into the launch template / boot config and roll nodes to update. 4. **Secrets** — Ignition config is often readable from instance metadata. Pull secrets at boot from a secrets manager via a systemd unit, or use platform-encrypted user-data — never embed plaintext secrets in the Butane. 5. **Kubernetes nodes** — wire kubelet/join via a systemd unit and a bootstrap token or TLS bootstrap; reference the relevant distro (Typhoon, CAPI, kubeadm) pattern. 6. **Validation & debugging** — `butane --strict`, validate Ignition schema, and how to read `journalctl -u ignition-*` / the Ignition failure on the emergency console when first boot fails (it fails hard and early by design). 7. **Updates** — Flatcar/FCOS auto-update strategy (update-engine / Zincati), reboot coordination (locksmith / FleetLock / Kured) so a cluster doesn't reboot all at once. Output as: (a) the Butane config, (b) the compile command, (c) the secrets-at-boot unit, (d) the auto-scaling / roll-to-update plan, (e) a first-boot debugging checklist. Bias toward: declarative first-boot-only config, roll-don't-mutate, secrets fetched at boot not embedded, coordinated reboots.